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A Dream Act: On

Education,Immigration, andGoodness

ril 25, 2011 By Tom Matlack 3 Comments (Edit)

Can microfinance revolutionize Americaneducation and solve the illegal 

immigration problem at the same time?

Chelsea, Massachusetts, just over the Mystic River from

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Boston, is one of the most densely populated areas of thecountry. Bankruptcy and corruption drove the town intostate-appointed receivership in the 1990s, and its reputationfor crime is hardly undeserved. Chelsea saw 10 murders in

2010, most of them knifings and many drug-related. Oneteenager was forced to kneel before being shot in the backof the head.But that’s not all there is to Chelsea.

On a recent evening at the Chelsea High School, 80 momsand dads, some teenagers, and a handful of babies arepacked into a classroom listening to Magaly Valentin, ananimated Spanish speaker. The audience reflects the originsof the city’s immigrants, with people from Guatemala, the

Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico. Many arelegal residents, but just as many are not. At a back table,salsa, chips, salami, brownies, and two-liters of Coke are laidout.

A saving circle—a monthly meeting of high school parents todiscuss savings, plan fundraisers, and learn abouthigher education, sponsorships, and ways to finance college—is in session. Magaly, both an instructor and a participant

in the program, is explaining how to apply for federalfinancial aid for college attendance through the FreeApplication for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The FAFSA isuseless to illegal immigrants, but they don’t seem to care; allthe parents in the room are scribbling notes and raising theirhands to ask Magaly questions.

“When you say scholarship or grant, that is free money—youdon’t need to pay it back,” Magaly answers, first in Spanishand then in English. She gets to a part of the form that asksabout alimony payments and laughs: “You know, that’s whathappens in Hollywood, not for us.”

She makes clear that the saving circle is for parents of allChelsea’s high school children, legal and illegal. “You have tobe a citizen to apply for FAFSA,” she says in Spanish, “but

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colleges don’t give a shit who you are if you have the moneyto pay tuition.” This eases the awkward separation of legalsfrom illegals for the next part of the evening, in which legalswill file their FAFSA electronically while the illegals will hear

about the scholarships for which they are eligible.♦◊♦

Bob Hildreth is also in the audience, his blue suit, glasses,and yellow tie looking completely out of place in one of theroughest neighborhoods in America. He’s wearing a brightred and white scarf from River Plate, a Buenos Aires soccerclub. He knows the name of every volunteer in the schooland he’s been smiling proudly at the standing-room-onlycrowd. Hildreth, founder and executive director of Families

United in Educational Leadership (FUEL), wants to increaseeducational funding, end poverty, and embrace immigrants—legal and illegal alike—all at the same time. This savingcircle is part of FUEL’s effort to do just that.

“The immigration rights debate is going nowhere butbackward,” Hildreth says, “but there is a need for immigrantintegration. Immigrant children make up the largestpercentage of students in our inner city schools, and they

are failing. FUEL is trying to reverse this by getting low-income parents involved. Improving the education of immigrants is important for America and for our country’swillingness to accept future generations of immigrants.”

♦◊♦

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immigrants needed bond but didn’t quite have it, he mightbe willing to pay half. “I thought maybe one, two, threepeople would take it, because bonds were $5,000 each,”Hildreth recalls. “Forty families took me up on it. And all of a

sudden I had to fork over $120,000.”

Hildreth got a lot of attention as a result, including a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, in which Hildreth wasquoted as saying, “The raid … was extremely un-American.”Glenn Beck, the national radio and television host, devotedan entire program to Hildreth. “I can think of plenty of crazyways to waste a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Beckopined. “But if busting illegals and their employers is un-American, I would hate to see what this guy

thinks is American.”Hildreth stood by his belief that defending the rights of theGuatemalan immigrants was no different from defendingthose of his own Irish ancestors. Hildreth’s mother was ahistory teacher, so the importance of immigrants to Americawas taught to him early. “Pick up any American history book,and you would think that American immigrants were angelscoming in,” he says. “All the inventors who were fromGermany, Austria, and Russia.”

But, he points out, one of the very first laws passed by thefirst U.S. Congress was the Alien and Sedition Act, intendedto keep out the French. “At that time, we thought they weredangerous, just like people who think immigrants now mightbe terrorists,” Hildreth says. “Nativism has been consistentlydark in our history.”Hildreth’s finance initiative worked. He got the illegals out of  jail. What’s more, the families all paid him back. Hildrethgave the money to legal aid, but the experience gave him anidea.

Immigrants earn more money than most people think; theyhave less to spend because they send a lot of it home tosupport their families. The Guatemalans in New Bedforddidn’t even speak Spanish; they were Mayans, the poorest of 

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the poor. But even they paid Hildreth back. He realized thatimmigrants should be spending more of their money on theirkids’ future, getting them educated and helping to break thecycle of poverty. Hildreth, an economist by training, came up

with FUEL as a microfinancing concept for immigrantfamilies.♦◊♦

 

 To be part of FUEL, parents agree to save up to $40 permonth for their high school child and attend at least sixsaving circles to learn about the college application andfunding process. FUEL matches the $40 and assists parentsand children in preparing for college. Hildreth and his teamhave written up 24 lesson plans and hold 12 sessions a year.After two years, they recycle the material, so that over thecourse of a high school career the parents will be exposed toall 24 classes.

Last year, its first full year in operation, FUEL raised over$400,000. More than 300 families in Lynn, Chelsea, andBoston now participate. The 12 high school graduates fromthe Lynn pilot program are the first in their families to attendcollege; all together, the group won $2.6 million in

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scholarships and 60 college acceptances. With the Universityof Massachussetts Amherst and Bunker Hill CommunityCollege, FUEL offers 25 full scholarships annually; two youngmen from Chelsea High School are already attending UMass

Amherst on full scholarships.

 There are currently some 11 million illegal immigrants in theU.S. To Hildreth, those people represent an enormouseconomic and cultural resource, and there is soundeconomic evidence to back him up. Most experts regard thedirect effect of immigration on the economy as positive. Thebelief that illegal migrants exploit the U.S. system and costmore in services than they contribute is “undeniably false,”according to Francine Lipman, an immigrantion expert and

professor of law at Chapman University, writing in Tax Lawyer and the Harvard Latino Law Review. “Undocumentedimmigrants actually contribute more to public coffers intaxes than they cost in social services. They contribute tothe U.S. economy through their investments andconsumption of goods and services, filling of millions of essential worker positions—resulting in subsidiary jobcreation, increased productivity, and lower costs of goodsand services.”

Hildreth points to the Longwood Medical Center in Boston,one of the most prestigious health care research centers inthe world, where just about no one is a native Englishspeaker. “The Koreans, the Japanese, Italians barelyunderstand what the bosses are telling them,” he says witha grin. At the bottom of the labor market, he argues thatimmigrants are willing to work incredibly hard at wagescitizens would refuse.

Hildreth earned his fortune during a career in Latin Americanfinance at the IMF, Citibank, Drexel Burnham Lambert, andhis own brokering company, International Bank Services. Hisconnection to South America was strengthened a decadeago when he bought a 12,000-acre eucalyptus farm innorthern Uruguay, near the Brazilian border. He hires

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workers to keep up the fences that allow herds of sheep toweed his property, and pays them not in currency but insheep. Every eight years, he harvests his eucalyptus trees,selling them to the local paper company, which clear cuts

them and drag the logs away. Eucalyptus trees regrow rightfrom the stumps into new mature trees eight years later.

In 2000, Hildreth downsized his investment firm and—brieflyand unsuccessfully—took up teaching history at ChelseaHigh. He never gave up on his belief in financial literacy.FUEL’s goal is to grow to include 500,000 families across theU.S. Hildreth wants the concept of matching grants toreplace families’ focus on scholarships. He doesn’t believe inhanding out money for education unless parents, no matter

how poor, are financially committed to their kids’ futures. “Amatch is always better than a scholarship,” he says, becausea match implies that the parents are actually doingsomething and getting involved, rather than just waiting forthe check to come in the mail.”

Parental involvement is quickly becoming essential, as thecost of four years of private college has reached nearly aquarter of a million dollars—at a time when state and

Federal budgets face unprecedented deficits. PresidentObama has proposed continued support for programsmaking college accessible to all qualified candidates. Buthigher education funding is in crisis.

Hildreth is convinced that families play a crucial role ingetting out of that crisis. Hildreth demands that an adult—aparent, grandparent, or family friend—come to the savingcircles to get the free money. In his view, an adult has totake an interest in the child for that child to have a chance tosucceed. “We can’t just test our way to success,” he says. InMassachusetts at least, his ideas are working. FUEL serveslegal and illegal immigrants alike, but has also expanded toBoys & Girls Clubs and to traditionally African-Americancommunities.

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♦◊♦

Back at the Chelsea saving circle, Richard Oliveras, a burly,dark-complexioned man, gathers his notes, ready to try hishand at filling out the electronic FAFSA. His child is afreshman at Chelsea High School and he has a son atVirginia Tech.

Oliveras, born in the Bronx, has a Puerto Rican background,but has lived in Chelsea for almost 23 years. “Love thistown,” he says. “It’s been good to me and my family.” He’s

determined to send his children to college and is acutelyaware of the difficulty, “especially for a lot of immigrantswho don’t speak English. Many are scared of the processitself.” Which is why he admires FUEL: “When you have folksexplaining it to you in your language, it makes it a lot easier.Folks are hungry for knowledge. There are children at theschool who may not be citizens but who are great students.”

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 Those are the students in whom Hildreth wants to invest.“America needs a Dream Act,” he says, not another Alienand Sedition Act. “It would allow hundreds of thousands of 

some of our best students to get to college. It would givehope to all of the struggling undocumented students to dowell in school. For me, America is about the freedom to dowell. It’s not about protecting native-born Americans fromcompetition from those who want to come here and strive.” We Recommend

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